Friday, 28 November 2014

Music - Part 346 - Jon Hassell/Brian Eno

Music
pioneers celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of their ground-breaking album.

The collaboration
between Jon Hassell and Brian Eno on the 1980 album Possible Nations was an
inspired one. Maybe the lesser known of
the two, Memphis born Hassell a trumpeter and composer trademarked his playing
by feeding the sound through synthesizers and the like. His influence on World Music via his own
coinage ‘Fourth World’ is undoubted and he in turn proved to be equally influential
on subsequent albums by David Sylvian (Brilliant Trees), Peter Gabriel (The
Last Temptation Of Christ) and David Byrne (My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts).

Eno needs
little introduction – David Bowie, Robert Fripp and Talking Heads tucked firmly
under his belt – he has performed with the likes of Roxy Music and produced the
exploits of U2. The Godfather Of Ambient
has influenced a generation (or two) with his musical tapestries and spacious
exploratory compositions.

Possible
Musics contains six tracks. All can be
seen as repetitive to a degree but opener Chemistry sets the style for the
album early on. It’s easy to see where
the likes of Gabriel took their expansive inspiration from as African and Asian
patterns inter-twine over Western backdrops.

Griot features
a strained trumpet (often almost unrecognisable) over minimal percussion and
faint drum sounds, it’s easy to see where todays ambient and drone acts can
trace back their lineage.

Highlight of
the album, Ba-Benzele features a Pigmy style of music called ‘hindewhu’ where
singing or whistling is performed with alternate high and low pitches to create
a hypnotic effect. Sounds of rolling
thunder embrace the feel of a space-age bee flying to escape the inevitable
storm.

An Eno album
wouldn’t be an Eno album without a curiously titled track and this is no
exception when Rising Thermal 14° 16’ N; 32° 28’ E makes its appearance. Apparently named after the map co-ordinates
of an area in the Sudan, it also translates into the image on the album
artwork.

The final
track, Charm (Over “Burundi Cloud”) clocks in at well over twenty-one minutes and
sadly is maybe fifteen too long. It’s
repetitive, but maybe slightly too much so and listening to the track soon
turns to endurance.